Emcee Judith McGill (clapping) while Orly Dinar welcomes everybody to the Cilento winery.

The 400 people who crowded into the uninusulated utility warehouse of the Cilento Winery in Woodbridge on February 24th for a benefit concert for Michael Schmidt made it clear that a lot of things you might have thought mattered, really didn't. In the end it didn't matter that Orly Dinar had given herself little more than a month to pull the whole thing together. It didn't matter that the event poster didn't wasn't fancy – and that it didn't say who was playing, or how much the food would cost. And it didn't matter that celebrity emcee Dinah Christie cancelled at the last moment. Judith McGill did just fine in that role. She's fast becoming the movement's very own celebrity emcee. It even didn't matter that only 200 advance tickets had been sold – because so many more people just showed up at the door with their $50.

Cow Shares Gaining on Milk Quota
What did matter was that Orly and her collaborators had brought together an event space where people could demonstrate their support for Michael Schmidt and for the raw milk values he champions -- a space where they could take heart from seeing and meeting so many other people who obviously felt the same way. I think everyone was impressed at the bidding for that one last remaining teat in the Glencolton herd. Who would have thought that demand for cow share memberships was such that someone would be willing to pay more than $4000 for the opportunity to get raw milk from Glencolton farm. I guess Greg Sorbara wasn't kidding when he said he or his wife had bought their cow share membership “as an investment”.

Media Watch
The several filmmakers who have been collecting material for documentaries on the story must have all thought it was going to be a special evening because it looked like they had all rented hi-def cameras for the occasion. You could see a provisional title on one laptop: “Michael Schmidt – Organic Hero or Bioterrorist?” Gee, I wonder which it could be. The media frenzy contributed to the hyperreal “whole world is watching” tone of the event. There was even a reporter working on an article for an American magazine, talking to people and taking notes. He's been following the raw milk story for the past three months and is actively tracking a number of similar situations across North America.

Funds Raised
I think everyone involved would consider the event a great success. The combined revenues from concert tickets, live auction, silent auction and food sales amounted to about $21,000 for the raw milk legal defence fund.

Celebrity Chef Jamie Kennedy